He said: “When you stick a knife into somebody’s body with that degree of force, as people say, bad things happen”.

He said Gleeson has good points but she made a huge error in judgement when she attacked the victim in a “fit of petulance.” He said the appropriate sentence was four to five years but he was taking her guilty pleas and expressions of remorse as mitigating factors in her favour.

Conor McKenna BL, defending, said his client had no history of violence before this attack. Since then she has been convicted for a number of assaults in 2014. Her ten previous convictions also include theft, property damage and threatening and abusive behaviour.

Garda Ultan Flynn told Lisa Dempsey BL, prosecuting, that at around 10pm on the night Mr Redmond and his girlfriend, Kathleen Carey, were waiting on the city quays for a bus to take them back home to Blanchardstown.

They had spent the day in town. Ms Carey’s sister, Natasha Carey, came up to Mr Redmond and hit him a “smack” to the back of his head. The victim’s girlfriend then began a verbal fight with her sister over what they were wearing.

Gleeson was together with the sister who was fighting the victim’s girlfriend and she prevented Mr Redmond from approaching the two women by coming over to him with her hand behind her back.

Mr Redmond backed off and Gleeson lunged at him. The victim felt a swift pain in his stomach and saw a lump of flesh. He ran away and Gleeson ran down the quays after him.

After her arrest Gleeson told gardai she had thrown the mini-steak knife into the Liffey.

Mr McKenna said his client is a mother of two who has previously successfully battled her drug addiction but has relapsed. He said at one point she was seen by a drug rehabilitation centre as a candidate for helping other addicts.

He described the attack as a shocking and nasty assault and said that Gleeson wanted to offer a full apology to Mr Redmond.